Retouchist.org is the blog of commercial Retoucher, writer and educator Sef McCullough where you'll find in-depth articles on the techniques and culture of Retouching and digital art. From actual tips and tricks, business insights, to interviews with some of the top Retouchers in the world, if you're interested in the field of High End Retouching you're in the right place.

There is a wonderful flexibility in the CMYK color space that one just does not experience while working in RGB. It's like having that single extra channel frees up our color adjustment layers to work as the programmers intended. It makes RGB feel like a theater of blunt instruments.

By a complete stroke of luck I was able meet and get to know a little bit about the keen eye behind the high end boutique retouching studio Solstice Retouch, Pratik Naik. Now you can too - he was cool enough to spend some time to answer some questions for Retouchist.org about his work, life, theory, and practice. He’s not only a really talented artist, but a teacher too. You can find his training content on RGG EDU.

Clipping. Cut Outs. Knock Out. Outlining. Pathing. It’s called a lot of different things but if you’ve spent any time working in Commercial Retouching - at any level - you know that it’s pretty much job one. That’s because Clipping is the absolute foundation of any real high res retouching job.

There are so many modal settings in Photoshop that it can seem like a virtual mine field of things to accidentally click that will screw up your day. When you're in the flow of work it can be a painful productivity hit when you get thrown off by something that is just not working. Here are 7 of the most common hangups that I've found bring me to a standstill. Check it out and join in the discussion if you've got some of your own.

99% of retouched files are going to have a grain layer sitting right at the top. It ties the elements together and provides a unified surface. If you’re doing a little slap-dash compositing, it can really help to hide any soft spots that may have been left behind. The Camera Raw Filter provides much more flexibility with the look of the grain, and you can go back to adjust it later with ease. Here’s how.

Getting the most control over your warps can be a puzzle if you haven’t figured out a good system to use every time. The good news is there is one, and it involves embedded smart objects so your warps are editable. The key to ultimate flexibility that many people miss though is the alignment step. I’ll show you how.

One of the painful steps in doing image extensions - aside from extending the picture - is redoing all of the masks after the canvas size changes. Masks are usually going to contain gradients, and they're almost to impossible extend seamlessly without putting in a lot of time. Let Content Aware Fill help.

Layer Effects are a really powerful set of tools for creating quick effects applied to pixel information. Most people think of them in terms of typographic or design-y uses, but they're an absolutely essential component of a high-res photo realistic retouching workflow. Follow this trick to free them from your layer stack and add endless flexibility.